This disclosure relates in general to an image forming apparatus comprising a fuser cleaner web for cleaning a surface like a fuser roll, and more particularly, to the application of a cleaning agent to the surface using the fuser cleaner web and a metering channel with apertures.
Electrophotographic image-forming machines are used to transfer images onto paper or other medium in both printing and copier systems. Generally, a photoconductor is selectively charged and optically exposed to form an electrostatic latent image on the photoconductor surface. Toner is deposited onto the charged photoconductor surface. The toner has a charge; thus, it will adhere to the photoconductor surface in areas corresponding to the electrostatic latent image. The toner image is transferred to the paper or other medium. The toned paper is heated by any of several methods including a fuser roller system and the toner in image-wise configuration is fused to the paper.
The fuser roll used in the fuser roller system eventually becomes contaminated with debris containing toner or by-products of toner and paper. This contamination usually takes the form of a film which eventually builds up and adversely affects the release properties and overall print life of the fuser roll.
Various systems have been used to deliver release agent fluid to the fuser roll including ones that use oil soaked rolls and wicks with and without supply sumps as well as oil impregnated webs. The oil soaked rolls and wicks generally suffer from the difficulty in that they require a sump of oil to replenish the roll and the wick as its supply of release agent is depleted by transfer to the fuser roll. Furthermore, a wick suffers from the difficulty of a relatively short life due to accumulation and chemical interaction. The web systems, on the other hand are limited in the quantity of oil they can deliver since the web materials leak oil when saturated to high levels. The oil leaks are very undesirable and can decrease print quality because they can form oil blotches. Furthermore, excess oil which ends up on fused substrate (in the release agent film-splitting event in the fuser nip) can interfere with post finishing applications such as book-binding, Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) encoding, lamination, and the like. In the past, various treatments to the print as well as the utilization of different fuser oils minimized the issue.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for a fuser oil applicator and cleaner in a single web cartridge system. Furthermore, there is a need for an improved cleaning agent dispenser in a single web cartridge system.